There is currently a fight brewing over the minimum wage. Some groups want the minimum to go up to $15.00/hour. In response, other groups point out that some industries cannot afford $15.00/hour. They point to the fast food industry as an example. McDonald’s recently began rolling out kiosks in its stores. By 2020 they will be in every store in the US. You can read about it here.

If the $15/hour minimum wage is enacted, then I foresee the following:

• McDonald’s uses new technology to improve productivity.
• McDonald’s workers get a higher wage.
• Some workers are let go. Jobs are plentiful so that they will get new jobs. These jobs will be higher paying jobs in other industries.
• McDonald’s customers will experience better service.

BTW, $15/hour does not sound high to me. I earned the minimum wage of $1.60 back in 1971. Adjusted for inflation that is $10/hour in today’s money. You can check it yourself using the inflation calculator from the BLS, here.

Contrasting this with the attitude of the ancient Romans is interesting. Emperor Vespasian (69-79 A.D.) turned down an offer to have some heavy columns transported cheaply. He was worried about the effect on employment, saying ‘you must let me feed my poor commons'[1]. He was probably correct. Application of technology would have resulted in widespread unemployment and unrest in the Roman Empire.

Critics of a minimum wage hike echo Vespasian’s attitude toward technology. It is true that a minimum wage hike will cause unemployment if jobs are scarce. That is true, but if jobs are plentiful, a minimum wage hike usually helps workers. Rome was a totalitarian state. It had a small group of super-rich people who controlled everything. Everyone else was either poor or a slave. Demand was static because all of the money was with the rich, and they didn’t need more money. If you made money outside the system, the Roman tax collector took it. This is true of any totalitarian state. They are inherently corrupt. In a totalitarian state, the group in power enriches itself at the expense of the rest of society.

By contrast, America is a democracy. It has a large, prosperous middle class. Government is not corrupt. The middle class wants to increase its standard of living. This increases the demand for goods and services. As productivity rises, displaced workers go into better-paying jobs. This middle class is due to Christianity. Christianity advocates for the poor, rather than the rich. There is no ‘divine right of kings’ in Christianity. Based on the teachings of the Bible, Christians want a living wage for poor workers. Christianity also encourages the use of technology to improve living standards. This created the modern society.

McDonald’s isn’t doing anything wrong by automating its stores, and its workers will benefit from a higher wage. This dance between technology and rising living standards helps all of us. I hope it continues long into the future.

1) Gimpel, Jean. The Medieval Machine, Penguin Books, New York, NY 1976, p 9.

Copyright 2018 by Richard Patton Creative Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.

There are numerous references to the supposedly book-burning, ignorant Christian.  This is mostly the work of Humanist ‘scholars’, who clearly twist the facts to suit their Christophobe bigotries.  Here is an example from a book on Oceanography.  You would think that the topic would have nothing to do with Christianity, but that doesn’t stop the author from writing about it.

From How the Ocean Works : an introduction to oceanography, by Mark Denny.

The Dark Ages

The notion of a spherical earth survived the Roman absorption of Greek culture, but it was nearly lost to Western Civilization with the fall of the Roman Empire.  In 391, for instance, Christian mobs overran the library at Alexandria and burned its invaluable contents.

Mr. Denny packs a number of myths and fallacies into these sentences.  Let’s unpack them and learn the truth.  We have already seen that the myth of the flat earth was invented by Washington Irving in 1828 (see Myth: The Flat Earth).  It has no truth or validity; Medieval thinkers did not believe in a flat earth and there is really no Biblical justification for believing in a flat earth.  The Bible is silent on this point.  Let’s look at the academic fantasies related to the Library of Alexandria.

• Few institutions inspire academic fantasies as much as the Library of Alexandria. The Library was not like a municipal library; you could not go to it and visit.  It was a prestige item owned by the Pharaoh.  No one has actually located a building called the Library (Canfora, p137).  It appears to have been some bookshelves located in the School of the Muses, or Museum (Barnes p73).
• When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 B.C., the Pharaohs became Greek and Alexandria was built to rule over the African population of Egypt. After his death, one of his generals, Ptolemy, eventually came to rule Egypt.
• Julius Caesar conquered Egypt in 47 B.C., and Augustus Caesar annexed it in 30 B.C. Thereafter Egypt, including the Library of Alexandria, became a Roman possession.  There appears to have been a daughter library (or perhaps a book warehouse) near the harbor of Alexandria; this was thought to have been destroyed by the fire Caesar started to burn the Egyptian fleet (Barnes p70-71, Canfora p137-142).
• As the Roman Empire declined in the 3^rd century A.D., the Library of Alexandria became an unnecessary expense. Caracalla sacked the city in 215 A.D.  No one knows exactly what happened to the Library.  It was probably destroyed in the fighting in the area around it (the Brucheon, where the Museum and Palace were located) in 272 A.D.  At this time there was fighting between the Roman forces under Aurelian and the Syrian forces under Zenobia.  One observer of the aftermath said that where the library had once been, ‘there is now a desert’ (Barnes p73, Canfora p195).
• So what happened in 391 A.D.? There were three major groups in Alexandria by 391 A.D. – Christians, Jews and Pagans.  The other two groups hated the Christians, because Christians were gaining and they were losing.  In 383 A.D. Christians were granted control of the Temple of Dionysus and displayed the ridiculous and indecent objects they found there.  There were Pagan riots and many Christians were killed (Hardy p84-87).  In 391 A.D., official support for Paganism was withdrawn and its temples closed in response to Pagan riots.  The Pagan historian Ammianus Marcellius (330-400 A.D.) confused the libraries of the Serapeum with the Library of Alexandria (Canfora p123).  The Serapeum (Temple of Serapis area) was turned over to Christians for churches and its temples were razed in 391 A.D. (Barnes p73).  This appears to be the source for myth that Christians burned the library.  A mob did not storm the Library; Christians took legal possession of the Serapeum.  Also, the Pagans could have removed the scrolls (if any were there) before the Christians took possession of the Serapeum.  Books on Serapis would not interest Christians.
• The Library was long gone by the time of the conquest of Alexandria by the Arabs in 641 A.D. They could not have burned the Library (Barnes p74), although they are sometimes accused of it.

Like the myth of the flat earth, the destruction of the Library of Alexandria has inspired countless Christophobes to slander early Christians and by extension, all Christians.

Mr. Denny has many more accusations of this kind; they are common to this kind of academic author.  Needless to say they are either outright falsehoods are gross exaggerations of what really happened.  I have chosen this example because it is typical of what a young Christian might see when he attends a university.  How the Ocean Works is a beginning text in the field, so a freshman or sophomore would use it, either as a textbook or a reference.  The sad thing about How the Ocean Works is that a young person considering Christianity might see this and be deterred.  That is why I put it up on this website.

Sources:

Barnes, Robert, ‘Cloistered Bookworms in the Chicken Coop of the Muses’, from The Library of Alexandria, edited by Roy MacLeod, I. B. Taurus & Co. Ltd, 2000.

Canfora, Luciano, The Vanished Library, translated by Martin Ryle, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1990.

Hardy, Edward Roche, Christian Egypt, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1952.

A further reference in the web is:

‘Library of Alexandria’ in Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria

There is another article, ‘Destruction of the Library of Alexandria’ in Wikipedia.  I have some issues with it, mainly because it is too polemical.  The author(s) in my opinion, go beyond what can reasonably be said about the Library given the evidence; they offer their conclusions as fact rather than conjecture.  According to Wikipedia, it does not meet their standards.

In 312 AD, Constantine legalized Christianity. It that point, perhaps 10-15% of the people in the empire were Christian. In 380 AD, Theodosius proclaimed Christianity as the official religion of the Empire. By that time, a large majority of people in the empire were Christians. Prior to that time, Christians has been subjected to periodic persecutions, such as the Diocletian persecutions (303-305 AD).

Before 312 AD, worldly men would scarcely have sought out a persecuted, outlawed religion and become a member of it. Now, however, a steady stream of such men, who were more interested in earthly advantages than heavenly ones, came into the church.

Cato the Censor (234-149 BC) was a roman writer who wrote a book on farming. You can read about his farm from a previous post, here. Let’s see what changes Cato would made to his farm if he converted to Christianity.

First, slaves get Sunday off, so his productivity goes down 14%.  They also get holidays off, and there goes another 6% of his slave’s work time.  The Catholic Church has many feast days.  On feast days, Cato would be expected to supply some of the provisions for the celebration.  He would be embarrassed to supply them with his poor wines.

Cato lived in Rome. When he visited his farm, as a Christian, Cato would go to church.  He would be expected to encourage his slaves to attend church, and many of them would. As there was only one denomination, Catholic*, he would attend the same church as his slaves.  Everyone would see and comment on the poor quality of his slave’s clothing, so Cato would have to lay out some money for a Sunday outfit.

Charging a fee for breeding would certainly be frowned on by the priest.  If Cato cares about going to heaven, he will discontinue that practice. He might need to find wives for his slaves.

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get to heaven.”   Matthew 19:24

Jesus said that because there is so much that a rich man can do, and is tempted to do, to make the life of his underlings miserable.

If he wants to go to heaven, he had better do something about his slaves’ well-being. There is also a community of Christians who know what he is doing. If he mistreats his slaves, he will lose standing and prestige in the community.

None of this involves any change in the law – Cato can still buy and sell slaves, and there are still slave markets.  If a slave owner must discipline a slave, he can do so.  There is also debt bondage (peonage) for free men who can’t pay their debts.  Slavery as an institution has not changed.  There is nothing in the Bible banning slavery.  Yet a decline in slavery set in with the onset of the Christian era.  By the 12^th century slavery was reduced to a very low level.  Periodically some new form of bondage such as serfdom would arise to replace it, and then that institution would also decline.

From an economic viewpoint, Christianity, with its concern for the poor, basically raised the minimum wage for slaves. Even if a bishop or a priest said nothing, his congregation certainly would, especially if he mistreated them. Overall Christian opinion frowned on slavery. His standing in the community would depend, at least in part, on how well he treated his slaves. In effect, his slaves are more expensive to maintain. He’ll need to upgrade their clothes. If a priest visits the farm, Cato doesn’t want naked slaves in the fields in the summer, so he must buy them summer garments, as well as a Sunday outfit. Slave’s might want to marry, and the priest will support them in that wish. Christianity frowns on prostitution. His housing costs would go up, as well as feeding expenses. Cato’s overall expenses are going up, and his work force is working less (Sundays are off).

Cato’s farm management

Let’s look at Cato’s farm. His farm might seem to be efficient – to amateurs. It does not look so good in view of modern farm management.

Cato is raising many different products – wheat, other grains, beans, etc. He’s growing 10-15 different crops, but only one of them makes money: wine for the vineyard or olive oil for the olive orchard. He grows a bit of this and a little of that. He does this because he has slaves, and slaves are free labor. He gains nothing by idling his slaves, so he buys extra equipment.

Cato’s farm is too far away to profitably ship grain to Rome, but higher value crops like wine or olive oil can still make money. Cato must earn more money than previously, because slaves cost more to maintain now. How can he do it?

Any businessman will tell you that the way to make money is to specialize. If only one crop is making money, concentrate on that crop.

For example, at his vineyard, Cato keeps oxen and equipment for growing and processing several different crops such as wheat. He is spending capital on these crops, but only making money at wine-making. At the same time, he is tarring his amphorae (airtight clay jars) to prevent air from getting inside and ruining the wine. The cheap clay they are made from is porous, so air leaks through the walls. He could buy more expensive amphora that did not leak air but diverts some of this money for the purposes of growing wheat. The tar itself ruins the wine, making it a cheap product, and he can’t sell the wheat at a profit.

Cato does this because the economics of slavery hold that if a slave is idle, the owner is losing money, and the slave is probably plotting to kill the owner in his spare time. This is not a good situation. To keep slaves busy and tired, Cato invests in equipment that brings him no profit. He buys land with reed marshes, so his slaves can cut stakes for his vines. He saves the cost of the stakes at the expense of the health of his slaves (malaria) as well as the cost of the equipment to cut the reeds and make the stakes. He is paying extra for land and equipment and saving the cost of buying stakes. He does this because his slaves’ labor is already paid for, so he might as well keep them working.

The slaves themselves, because they cannot concentrate on doing a few things well, do many things indifferently. Their tools are not specialized to do a few things, but rather many things. They are jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none. His foreman looks after many different farm crops and cannot concentrate on the crop that makes money. This is especially true in a vineyard, since the foreman is worried about nearly everything, but should only be worried about the winery. A good wine sells for far more than a poor wine.

The economics are marginal for Cato’s farm, and this is reflected in the fact that Cato does not make much money. He can only make money by taking it out of the hide of his slaves. He grinds them down and spends as little as possible on them. The extra demands of Christianity would tip his farm into losses, since he can no longer mistreat his slaves.

It is certain that slavery was in decline in the ancient world. By the 3^rd century there was a steady decline in slavery, and this continued for centuries. If this was due to rising costs of the slaves themselves (both price and upkeep), then slavery would certainly decline. Owners would look for ways of obtaining a more flexible work force due to economic pressure.

Readers will remember the story of St. Melania the Younger from a previous post, here. Her story included the manumission of any of her slaves who wanted to be manumitted. 8000 slaves were manumitted, but she owned over 24,000 slaves in Sicily alone, and she had many other properties. In other words, less than 1/3 of her slaves wanted to be manumitted.

Why would you be a slave and not want your freedom? Slaves, like anyone else, must assess their economic opportunities. If owners were manumitting slaves (or not replacing them) for economic reasons, then there would be an abundance of free rural labor. A slave might decide, in uncertain times, that he would prefer to belong to a rich, powerful owner rather than try the free labor market. In fact, there is evidence that free rural wages were depressed in this period.

Note that this change did not require any change in the law outlawing slavery, nor did there need to be any proclamations about the need to end slavery from ecclesiastic authorities. Everything could continue, on the surface, just as it had previously. There would only be social pressure at the parish level for slaves to be treated better. This pressure would come at least partly because owners would be expected to allow all of their slaves to attend church, and they would be seen by the parish priest.

Paganism had no comparable system of organized attendance. Only the owner would go to the temple, and he would only do so when a sacrifice was required, or a request made of the gods. He did not go to the temple on a weekly basis, and he represented the entire family.

The teachings of Christ did not outlaw slavery, but they did make slavery less profitable. Slavery steadily declined until the age of colonialism, when unholy men, lusting for wealth and power, used certain teachings of Aristotle (natural slavery) to argue that race slavery was somehow different. It is not different, of course, and we are still dealing with the after-effects of that tragic wrong turn. God willing, we will heal those wounds and move on to a better tomorrow.

Sources

1) Brehaut, Ernest, Translator, Cato the Censor on Farming, 1955, Octagon Books, Inc., New York, NY.

2) Finley, M. I., Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, 1980, Viking Press, New York, NY, pp 123-149.

Cato the Censor (aka Cato the Elder) was a Roman senator who was born in 234 BC and died in 149 BC.  He wrote a book, On Farming¹, describing two farms.  He intended it as a handbook for young farmers.  We will take these as examples of Roman farms.  On one farm he has a 150-acre olive orchard and the other is a 62-acre vineyard.  These are the two cash crops.  He also gives instructions for the following:

Wheat (3 types)

Spelt

Barley

Millet

Lentils

Lupins

Field beans

Vetches (2 types)

Fenugreek

Turnips

Rapeseed (an oil plant, Canola oil is a variety of rapeseed oil. Rapum is Latin for turnip.)

Cato values meadows, because in southern Italy forage is scarce in summer.  Poplar and elms were planted for forage; their leaves were used in late summer and fall.  Italy has a Mediterranean climate; it has hot dry summers and wet, rainy winters.  Field crops like wheat are planted in the fall and harvested the following spring.  The grain land was ½ fallow and ½ planted.  The resting of the soil was so it could recover some of its fertility.  The vineyard had 16 slaves and the olive orchard had 13 slaves.  There was a slave-foreman and his slave-wife.  All work, including supervision, was done by slaves, except for outside contractors.

Cato purchased as little as possible.  He advised having a marshy, wet area on the farm to grow reeds and willows for the vineyard.  He followed general farming, so many things such as wood for fires, pigs and sheep were raised.  The obvious goal as to feed and house the slaves through products from the farm, keep oxen and donkeys for work animals, and buy only the bare minimum outside the farm.  The farm also produced delicacies for the owner.

Slaves were given as little as possible and treated like animals.  The ration appears to have been about 3000-3400 calories/day¹, which is adequate for slaves at moderate work, but less than 70 g of protein, which is not.  Since we do not know the exact amount of protein in the wheat grown by the Romans, this can vary.

Protein is made up of amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein.  Unless all the essential amino acids are present in the right proportions, humans cannot synthesize protein for muscles and other uses.  Wheat is deficient in lysine, which means that unless it is supplemented by other food sources rich in lysine, the wheat protein cannot be used to build the body.  Without supplementation, the wheat protein requirement is about 150 g/day because the lysine content of wheat is so low.  Many vegan diets are deficient in this amino acid, and this would apply to Cato’s slaves, especially since Cato was determined to feed them as cheaply as possible and meat costs more than grain.  Cato, of course, would not know this since modern nutrition was unknown to the ancient Romans.  Roman soldiers got the similar rations and probably suffered deficiencies.

Cato’s slaves were given a tunic of 3½ (Roman) lbs. and a cloak once every other year.  The translation is ambiguous and could mean the tunic either weighed 3½ lbs., or was 3 feet, 4 inches long.  The length specification makes more sense in southern Italy, where a 3½ lb. tunic made of wool would be extremely heavy.  These are all cold weather clothing; in summer Cato’s slaves were naked. They wore wooden shoes and were given a pair every two years.  When slaves were given new clothes, old ones were taken from him to make patchwork cloaks, and perhaps sell them.  Slaves were to understand that everything they owned was the master’s, and nothing, not even their old, worn-out clothes, was the slave’s permanent possession.

Cato’s slaves were housed in the barn with the animals. Pliny (the Elder) reported that his oxen were treated better.

Only one slave woman was specified in Cato’s book, and she was the wife of the slave foreman. None of the other slaves had wives or girlfriends. This was not in the book, but apparently Cato allowed his slaves to accumulate some money. We know this because Pliny reported that he charged a fee to his slaves for breeding. Unless he was running a brothel (legal in Rome) Cato must have had some other slave women on his farms for breeding purposes. After they paid Cato to have sex, their child was owned by Cato.

Criticism

Cato cares nothing for his workers.  That marshy area was no doubt mosquito-infested with consequent malaria.  He is concerned at all times to show his slaves his power and overawe them.  The strongest of them were kept in chains to make them easier to control.  All of his slaves would know they could be put into chains or sold to a worse owner.

Every inch of his ground yielded profit.  He planted wheat between his olive trees to save money, made sure all of his waste ground was put to use, and kept his slaves as cheaply as possible.   White² makes the point that the farm was ‘efficient’.  Slaves can handle difficult tasks (by this logic) as well as free men.

Cato is obsessed with efficiency.  Slaves are to be kept busy at all times.  Romans, like all slaveholders, feared slave revolts.  Manuals of instruction for slaveowners from around the world instruct the owner to ‘keep the slaves busy’.  They work every day.  There are no weekends and no days off due to weather or holidays.  If there is no work to be done on the farm, make some.  Keep them tired and worn out so they can’t make trouble.  Make them understand their servile status and feel the power of their master.  Every minute of a slave’s waking hours is to be devoted to making him money.

Here are some problems with that attitude:

Cato recommends intercropping (planting wheat between olive trees).  The FAO³ says it reduces yields of both olives and wheat, especially if the olive trees are full grown.  Cato grew up on a farm and this is the way they did it.  Which of his slaves is going to tell him this is a bad idea?

Of course, none of them will.  It is the slave’s job to obey, not to think.  Cato makes it clear that the first job of the foreman is to discipline the slaves.  He should never listen to them.  Cato advises his foreman to cajole the ox drivers because he will get better work out of them.

The worst idea on Cato’s farm is (probably; it’s chock full of bad ideas) to grow trees for late summer forage.  Slaves had climb the trees and pick leaves, and it takes hundreds (maybe thousands) of them to make a snack for an ox.  Cato’s problem was that this was a slack time of year.  ‘Keep those slaves busy!’, even if it doesn’t pay much.

In Cato’s book is a description of a winery. His wines were abominable, according to his contemporary Pliny⁴.  He tried selling his wines to his friends, but no wealthy Roman would drink his swill.  Which of his slaves will tell him that buying cheap, leaky containers and then tarring the inside makes a very poor wine since the tar ruins the taste?  Since Cato is Mr. Know-it-all, improving his wines is literally impossible.

Just from this brief description of Cato’s farm, you can see the problem.  Cato doesn’t want quality, efficiency or productivity.  He wants obedience. Since he doesn’t pay wages to anyone, his farm is almost sure to make money.  In fact, Cato made most of his money from usury, not farming. It was not as profitable as he would have liked.

Hiding behind their fine words and fine art is the heartless, thuggish nature of Roman, as well as Greek society.  The Greeks also had a slave society, and they were not much better than the Romans in their treatment of them.

The coming of Jesus changed the expectation of what a good society looked like and how it behaved. The (usually upper-class) classical scholars praising Greco-Roman civilization knew about the slaves but did not care. Christians did care and eventually outlawed slavery.

References

1) Brehaut, Ernest, Translator, Cato the Censor on Farming, 1955, Octagon Books, Inc., New York, NY, pp 78-79.  The bread ration for fettered slaves (some were kept in chains) was 4 lbs/day in winter.  These are Roman pounds, or 13.08 oz (it would have varied because weights had not been fully standardized, and we do not know how accurate the scales were).  This was unleavened bread, so we cannot look up modern breads and calculate exactly how many calories that was.  According to Pliny, bread exceeds the weight of the grain by 1/3.  If we figure the Roman milling practices (their flour was loaded with dirt and grit) this makes sense.

2) White, K. D., Roman Farming, 1970, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.

3) FAO, Improvement in Olive Cultivation/by Fernand Paul Pansiot, horticulture specialist and Henri Rebour, consultant, 1961.

4) Allen, H. Warner, A History of Wine, 1961, Horizon Press, New York, NY, pp 72-86.

Excellent description of Cato’s wines and winery from a wine connoisseur.

This is the first of the posts on Aristotle, who is widely considered to be both the greatest scientist of the ancient world and its greatest philosopher. One book that Aristotle wrote is Nicomachean Ethics. It is subdivided into 10 books. Remember, in ancient times, writers did not write books; they wrote scrolls. Probably each book was written as one scroll by Aristotle. In the translation I am using, Nicomachean Ethics (all 10 books) takes up 171 pages. Aristotle is so influential that his books are divided into chapter and verses, just like the Bible. Also, just like the Bible, Aristotle did not put these in when he wrote it; scholars later added the chapters and verses to make it easier to quote.

Unlike most commenters on Aristotle, I am not going to discuss his ‘thought’. I’m going to discuss his results. In my opinion, most of the time thinkers start out with a preconceived idea of where they wish to end up, and produce arguments reinforcing that idea. According to Ben Franklin, in his Autobiography, man is a ‘reasonable’ animal; he can always find ‘reasons’ for what he wants to do. In other words, it is the end result that is important. How you got there is just your excuse for your conclusion.

In book 10 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle reaches his conclusions.  He concludes that the greatest pleasure is understanding (10:7:7 – book 10, chapter 7, verse 7). He also concludes that it reaches the highest happiness. It is supremely best (10:7:9). He also concludes that the activity of study is most godlike because it is self-sufficient, and the gods are self-sufficient. The gods, he concludes, are pleased by humans who study because it is akin to the gods (10:8:13). Therefore, study leads to the highest happiness and greatest pleasure.

I think Aristotle was tooting his own horn here. He liked to study, and it made him happy. He decided that this was the supreme way of life for everyone, which seems like a leap to me. He jumps from what he does to what the gods want and decided that what they want is what he likes.

Aristotle believed that the highest life should be self-sufficient, because that is the most godlike state. Study and contemplation required few goods, whereas politics and other activities required many goods. His concept of science is that it is part of philosophy, and so it should require little external equipment. The elaborate equipment of a scientific lab, and the coordination of many people to perform one task, would have been anathema to Aristotle. Not only does it require many external resources, it also requires multiple investigators. He would consider it ‘slavish’.

In short, Aristotle’s science was a self-limiting exercise. It was part of philosophy. It was done by men of leisure, i.e. gentlemen. It was done with few external resources and it was done for the sake of happiness. Such a science would never get very far. Science is an economic activity. With few resources it does not accomplish much.

Aristotle is regarded as the greatest of the ancient scientists. Ancient science can be divided into three periods: before Aristotle, Aristotle, and after Aristotle. Science never amounted to much in ancient times because it had no economic foundation. Aristotle’s scientific program for the school he founded, the Lyceum, lasted 2 generations before students lost interest. His follower’s science never surpassed his and science was never important to the wider society.

Aristotle studied the anatomy of animals, but he never applied his knowledge. The cruel harnesses used in ancient times choked the horse if he pulled hard, so that horses were confined to riding or pulling light carriages. Aristotle never studied harnessing a horse because that was craft, and craft was below the dignity of a gentleman; it was slavish.  The stagnant technology of the Greeks and Romans can be traced to these attitudes.

Christianity broke up this stale, stagnant world. The contrast between a civilization made for the rich and powerful and a civilization that was concerned with everyone (‘the last shall be first’) was stunning. Christians became a majority around 350 AD. It is generally thought that improved horse harnesses were either invented or adopted by Christians between 300-600 AD. We don’t know who did this good deed, but we do know who did not do it and would not have encouraged inquiry into it: Aristotle.

Sources:

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 2^nd edition, translated by Terence Irwin, 1999, Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis, IN.

Tessitore, Aristide, Reading Aristotle’s Ethics, 1996, State University of New York, Albany, NY.

Franklin, Benjamin, The Autobiography of Ben Franklin, 1902, A. L. Burt, Co., New York, NY.

I’m standing in the candy aisle of Walmart (confession: I’m on a diet and cannot actually eat any candy. I just want to look at it.).  Chocolate candies have changed. At one time, candy was for kids, and milk chocolate was the candy to buy.  Now, adults have gotten into the act. Chocolate, we are told, is good for you. You should eat some every night. Hooray for science! I’m all for it. Unfortunately, accompanying this new trend are chocolate candies aimed at adults with ‘sophisticated’ tastes. They cost 3 times as much as milk chocolate. They boast names like ‘supremely dark’. They are up to 90% cocoa, and they taste awful.

Why would anyone eat something that tastes awful? There might be a few readers who actually like the new, dark chocolates, but I can’t stand them. Even the special dark ones, the ones that are edible, are not really good. These used to be called ‘bittersweet’ or ‘semisweet’. They never did much for me. They are not sweet enough, and they are about 50% cocoa. Cocoa has an intensely bitter flavor; it must be balanced with other ingredients to make a smooth candy that tastes delicious. For chocolate candy, more cocoa is not better.

Why pay more for a lower quality product? It makes no sense. The adults who claim they that this stuff tastes better are fooling themselves. If you ask a kid which tastes better, milk chocolate or dark, bitter chocolate, he will choose, without hesitation, the milk chocolate. He would need training to choose one of the ‘dark’, bitter stuff. Why would you train someone to pick a bad-tasting candy?

The all-purpose excuse is health and the sugar bugaboo. I have given up on taking health advice from pop culture. Too much of it is dangerous. Talk to a hospital worker and he will tell you about admissions to the hospital caused by someone going on an extreme diet and virtually destroying one of their organs. I did not, for example, know that a low carb, high protein diet can make your kidneys grow, to handle all of that protein, until I tried it and watched the urea in my blood work shoot up. Then I found out that it makes your kidneys grow. No thank you. I cut back on the protein.

One of the substances that your body does know how to handle is sugar. The small amount of extra sugar in milk chocolate vs. a dark chocolate will have a miniscule effect on your health. That is not a reason to eat bitter candy.

Many people believe that bad tasting medicine is good for you. To be cured, one must suffer. This is really a variant of pagan beliefs. For most of human history, people have turned to religion for cures. Think of it this way. Suppose you wanted to make a deal with God, and offer him something special, in return for curing a close relative. Would you offer to eat chocolates every day and enjoy life, or would you offer to eat broccoli and liver every night and be miserable?

Most people would opt for broccoli, liver and misery, because most people believe that God loves misery. They think being miserable pleases Him. There is nothing in the Bible to substantiate that. The sacrifice Lord Jesus asks of you, is for you to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s a bigger sacrifice than eating bitter candy.

In Galatians 4:3, Paul talks about being slaves to:

            “.. elemental spirits of the universe ..”

which, according to my Bible’s annotations, might be better translated as “rudimentary notions of religion”. Part of Christianity should be that Christ freed us from these notions, including the one that He wants us to be miserable. What He wants is for us to treat each other with kindness, respect and mercy. That is a difficult task; why make it harder by eating bad candy?

The notion that God loves a hair shirt can be combined with another preoccupation of adults – one-upmanship. This combination animates every killjoy on the planet. The eternal game of ‘I’m better than you’ is played out constantly. These killjoys verbally assault anyone who does not follow their proscriptions. The killjoys say ‘it’s for our own good’, but it’s really for their ego.

On the Walmart candy aisle, the killjoys are winning. The section containing low-calorie, sugar-free candies is shrinking, whereas the section containing bitter chocolate candies is increasing. The sugar-free stuff does not give your blood a sugar jolt like the other candies. For dieters, the quantities in each bag are small, so that a bag only contains candies with 360 or so calories – not enough to destroy your diet. It also has the same health-giving properties as regular (or bitter) chocolate candy. There are probably no truly healthy choices on a candy aisle, but these come closest to being healthy.

As I say, that section of the aisle is dwindling. People cannot resist the appeal of smugness, so that even the simplest pleasure is sullied. The killjoys are winning – and sinning. The primary virtue, the virtue from which all other virtues spring, is humility. True humility does not mean thinking less of yourself; instead it means thinking more of others. It means loving your neighbor as yourself. Enjoy the small, innocent pleasures of life, and do not try to take them from others, pretending to virtue. If you do, you might just roast in Hell.

The Rise of Christianity was written in 1996 and originally published by Princeton University Press, and later by HarperCollins. Stark is that rarest of academics, one who is not prejudiced against Christians and Christianity. He has no strong religious convictions of his own. He is a sociologist who studies religion.

The Rise of Christianity is devoted to explaining, in secular terms, how and why Christianity grew in the Roman Empire. It gives some of the nuts and bolts of how our religion spread, including the heavy involvement of women in supporting the early church as well as the differing reaction of pagans and Christians to events such as the two plagues, one in 165 AD. and one in 251 AD. In both cases, Christians bravely cared for the sick, whereas pagans shoved the sick members of their households out onto the street to die in ditches on the side of the road or migrated from the city leaving their sick behind to starve and die helplessly.

The pagans knew that the disease was spread by contact with infected victims, and there was no effective medical treatment. According to their religion, once they had appealed to their gods (really carved figured of wood and stone) and sacrificed to them, there was nothing more that they could do.

Christians, on the other hand, believe in an afterlife and that Heaven is waiting for Believers. Jesus commanded us to care for the sick (Matthew 25:36) and so Christians did just that. Many patients, both Christian and pagan, recovered after Christians said prayers over them, fed them and nursed them. Some died, and some Christian nurses died, but the death rate was much lower for those under Christian care. It was a Christian miracle.

Atheists believe that religious beliefs have no effect on society, so it makes no difference what (if any) religion you believe in. In fact, Christian beliefs have had a major impact on society, as exemplified by the two responses to epidemics.

Stark believes that Christianity increased at a rate of 40% per decade for centuries, and that furthermore the plagues helped convince pagans of the value of Christianity, further adding to the increase. By 350 AD., Christianity had achieved dominance over paganism. This was a time of tension, as pagans began to leave the public square, and lose the state funding that had made a career as a pagan priest so lucrative. Battles broke out between Christians and lawless pagans in cities like Alexandria, as pagans sought to retain valuable public real estate for their unused and unwanted temples.

In 361 AD. Julian the Apostate became Emperor. He was a pagan and wanted to bring back paganism. By now, Christians were in a clear majority in the Empire. Julian was convinced that Christian charity was behind the rise of Christianity. Stark quotes one of the greatest backhanded compliments that Christians have ever gotten about our charity:

“I think that when the poor happened to be neglected and overlooked by the [pagan] priests, Galileans [Christians] observed this and devoted themselves to benevolence.”

and:

“The impious Galileans [Christians] support not only their poor, but ours as well, everyone can see that our people lack aid from us.”

Has there every been a better summary of the pagan view of Christian charity? Could any pagan have penned a better compliment? Next Christmas, when the humanists start railing about the Christian desire to make sure that every child has a nice Christmas present, quote Julian to them. The more things change, the more they stay the same!

The Rise of Christianity has numerous quotes and observations like that. It’s one reason I like the book so much. Unlike other secular writers, Stark has not hesitated to include items that reflected favorably on Christianity. For that reason alone, it is a good book to read.

A Christian still might ask, “Why read this book?”  The usual non-fiction reading for a Christian is a devotional or a Bible study book. Here is why, in two verses from the Bible:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

Matthew 28:19-20.

This is the great commission. It is the last command of Lord Jesus in the Book of Matthew. It was given to the 11 disciples after he had been resurrected from the grave. It is a command to all of us. Here is the second verse you should know.

“Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So, he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the market place every day with those who chanced to be there.”

Acts 17:16,17

Some of you are in college, and it is your job evangelize the atheists, just as Paul did. This is part of the great commission. Some of that involves meeting atheists and arguing the case for Christianity. Just as Paul did, you must argue on secular grounds, because those are the grounds that atheists accept. Paul was not ashamed of Christianity and he wasn’t afraid of the philosophers; he went boldly forth into the marketplace. You should do likewise.

There is no better starting place, in my opinion, to learn the secular case for Christianity than The Rise of Christianity. It has example after example of Christians in action. There is much nonsense and dishonesty in academia about Christianity. For example, the feminist case against Christianity is nonsense; women, given a choice between paganism and the early Church, flocked to the Church and were a mainstay in its rise. The young Christian must arm himself (or herself) against the misinformation and outright lies of academia about Christianity. The Rise of Christianity is a good place to start, which is why I am recommending it.

When we think of slaves, in America we think of the plantation system in the antebellum South. Slavery in the Roman Empire was somewhat different in that it was a slave society. Slavery was not put in opposition to an already free society as in America; instead it was an integral part of commercial Rome. The roles that slaves occupied were not only at the bottom of the pyramid, but also at the top.  This is somewhat difficult to envision. Why would you want a slave managing your company?

An American Analogy

To answer that, we can turn to universities for examples. In graduate school, it is important for the student to have an advisor at either the PhD or master’s level. An advisor guides the student through his dissertation or thesis. I have known quite a few engineering and science professors who refuse to be advisors to American students. They have developed pipelines to universities in foreign countries, and they bring them over here to study.

The foreign student is usually from a poor country such as China. He sees a path to citizenship in the United States. He is willing to work very hard to achieve his goals.

The advisor, on the other hand, sees a very hard-working student that he can control. American students have options that foreign students do not. They cannot be failed and sent back. The advisor gains extra control over the foreign student and does not want to deal with the more equal American student. In other words, he cannot abuse the American student. Some professors are known to work their students abusively. They get away with it because none of the students complain. In essence, the advisor is selling American citizenship.

Roman Society

In Rome there were approximately 1.2 million people divided as follows: 650k on the dole, 150k citizens not on the dole and 400k slaves. The slaves served the oligarchs who ran the Empire.

Oligarchs appointed slaves to run their farms and businesses. The system was slanted against Roman citizens, who contented themselves with bread and circuses. A few middle-class Romans eked out a precarious economic existence. Most slaves were foreigners; Rome at that time was rule by foreigners.

This system worked very well for the rich and powerful. The government was mostly run by slaves. The emperor no longer had to worry about a coup. Formerly there were reigns of terror; emperors purged aristocratic families so that few were left. Now those families had been replaced by slaves and most of the work of running the empire was done by slaves. In the reign of Nerva (96-98 AD) only one-half of the senatorial families remained counted in 65 AD. The reign of terror under the Emperor Domitian had reduced them.  By 125 AD, only 1 of the 45 aristocratic families restored by Julius Caesar in 47 BC remained. By replacing aristocrats in positions of power with slaves, the emperor secured his throne.

Similarly, the rich replaced the use of free labor with slaves. They steadily drove men out of business and confiscated their goods. At one time, there were a large number of small farmers in the Roman Republic, but the rich through wars and taxation gradually drove them into poverty. As a result, fewer and fewer people had independent means. Most of the rest landed on the dole. A few middle-class people held out, but they became less and less important.

Another feature of the Roman system was the sexual element. Homosexuality was rampant, which meant that any slave, male or female, could be called upon to satisfy the master or mistress. Since these were slaves, there was no chance of a #metoo movement. Instead the only way to advance was to do the bidding of the master.

The sexual exploitation of slaves by their masters was a given in the ancient world. The satirist Horace was not being satirical when he wrote, “I like my sex easy and ready at hand.” The elder Seneca summed up the situation with this aphorism: ‘Unchastity is a crime in the free-born, a necessity in a slave and a duty in the freedman’. Here Seneca was describing the passive partner in male homosexual relations. The free-born master should penetrate his slaves and freedmen; he should never be penetrated. The slave has no choice in the matter; he must allow himself to be penetrated or face punishment. The freedman is duty-bound to allow himself to be penetrated by the master. This is sex as an expression of power, not love.

For comparison, in Hollywood, 94% of women surveyed felt that they had been sexual abused in some way on the job. One of the most common kinds of sexual abuse was someone else having sex with the boss and getting promoted; this was reported by 65%. It is an interesting question how this could be legally prosecuted, since the sex in this case is presumably consensual. Also, this sex will not necessarily be heterosexual; homosexuals could also indulge in it.

One way to think of Roman society is as a 100% safe (for the rich and powerful) #metoo society. Sex was an expression of personal power, but because it was also the road to advancement for a slave it could be consensual. To advance, the Roman slave had to be the ultimate yes-man.

Everyone in Rome was involved in patronage, either as a patron or a client. Poor, hungry clients begged their rich patrons to invite them to dinner; here they might be treated to a feast or perhaps to something less than a feast. It depended on the whim of the patron, and some clients went home hungry.

The word for these obligations of respect was obsequium. Obsequium technically was the obligation of respect that bound an ex-slave (freedman) to the master who had manumitted him. From the parasitic do-nothing to the greatest aristocrat, each man in Rome had the obligation of respect, or obsequium, to someone more powerful, and in turn had clients lower on the social scale who paid obsequium to him. As Seneca pointed out, obsequium included sexual obligations. If asked, a client allowed himself to be penetrated by his patron.

The slave competed against other slaves. If he was manumitted, he owed obsequium to his former master. Usually freedmen became part of the inner circle of the master and handled some of his business. They also pleasured their former master. This was how one rose in the world. Freedmen and high-level slaves could become rich from business dealings and corruption.

The Romans had the institution of the peculium, which allowed a slave to accumulate money. On business travel, a slave-agent was in no way considered different from any other agent of a large business, except the slave ultimately had no rights. He could be sold at any moment by his master. That was the attraction; he could be controlled, including his sex life. Technically the peculium was owned and controlled by the master, but in practice a slave controlled it and could buy his freedom with it. Slaves were so far advanced in the commercial world that they were allowed to give testimony in courts, especially in commercial law, where the slave might be managing a business. In general, Roman law forbade slaves giving testimony; instead they were tortured.

What infuriated observers like Juvenal was that most of the good jobs and chances for advancement were reserved for slaves. Foreigners, Juvenal writes, ruled Rome. These foreigners were usually either freedmen, slaves or the descendants of freedmen. Without a patron you went nowhere in the Roman Empire, and most patrons preferred their freedmen to free-born Roman citizens.

Christianity ultimately brought down this system. Christian emphasis on family life and its rejection of homosexual brought it many converts, especially women. The Roman population continually shrank. Emperors complained of the low birth rate among the aristocracy, which is easily understood because homosexual relations do not lead to children. The slave birth rate was very low. Columella, the agricultural writer, offered to liberate any of his slave-women who bore 4 children. This seems like a low threshold for manumission, but he probably would not have had takers if it had been higher.

Christians, with their healthier lifestyle and emphasis on home life, continually increased. Women wanted dignity, not the obscene culture of Rome. As the Christian population grew, Christians opposed and discouraged slavery. Slavery shrank into the margins of society. Eventually it was outlawed.

Non-Linear Thinking

Most of you have never studied system theory. In dynamical systems, there is something called an attractor. An attractor ‘attracts’ the system to it. You can think of attractors as planets, pulling a spaceship toward it. A linear system has one attractor, i.e. every system tends to move toward the same point.

A non-linear system has multiple attractors. A system may be stable for a long time, but if pushed enough it might move to a new attractor, much as a space ship can be blasted off the earth and land on the moon. Once on the moon, it stays on the moon. Both the moon and earth are attractors of the space ship.

There is scarcely anything more non-linear than human society, and at the heart of human society are sex, reproduction and family. Studying different civilizations can tell us the different ways in which society can be ordered. One successful way was Roman society, which was very different from medieval Christian society. It was, like medieval Christian society, an attractor. No laws were passed to produce a structure like that of Roman society; it just drifted into it.

We can order society a certain way, we’ll call it the ‘Christian way’, or we can order it differently. Another way to order it is the ‘Roman way’. It is question whether we are drifting into the ‘Roman way’, but the signs aren’t good.

Sources

Roman life

Carcopino, Jerome, Daily Life in ancient Rome, edited by Henry Rowell and translated from the French by E. O. Lorimer, 1940 Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

Chapter 3 on Society and Social classes supplied information in population of different classes in Rome and the attrition of the aristocratic classes.

Finley, M. I., Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology,1980, Viking Press, New York, NY.

Chapter 3, Slavery and Humanity, describes the position of the slave, including his sexual obligations to his master.

#metoo

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/02/20/how-common-sexual-misconduct-hollywood/1083964001/

Puenta, Maria and Cara Kelly, How Common is Sexual Misconduct in Hollywood?, USA Today.

Non-linear systems

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor

Attractors are described in this Wikipedia article.

Inside the Atheist Mind is a new book by Anthony DeStefano. It was published on March 20, 2018 by Nelson Books.

The book takes us inside workings of the atheist mind, showing us how they think. I agree with most of what Mr. DeStefano has to say. It is past time that someone pointed out that some atheists are bullies, that they seem fascinated by a culture of death and that they exhibit no tolerance toward Christians.

The tone of the book is as a rant. DeStefano is an angry man, and he lets loose on his foes. He lets atheists know in the first pages that he will not be nice, and he isn’t. Rants are not for altering anyone’s mind; rather they are for confirming the ideas of believers. If you are not sure what militant atheists are up to, and want a run down, this book is for you. It won’t change your mind, but it will confirm your beliefs.

If you are sitting on the fence, this might help. Just remember that it is a rant and therefore angry. If you don’t like rants, stay away.

It is a rather short book. The main body of the book appears to be about 30,000 words, which is half the length of a novel. There are another 50 pages, about 8,000 words, of notes and references, so you can look up the material he is discussing. The total, about 40,000 words, is on the short side. Considering the number of topics that the author introduces, I would have liked a longer book with a more measured pace.

My second problem with the book is that DeStefano speaks of a ‘Renaissance’ as though there actually was a renaissance that brought us out of the ‘Dark Ages’. Most of the book’s quotes start around 1400 AD, so there is very little on early and Medieval Christianity. The ‘Renaissance’ is humanist fiction. It never happened because there was never a Dark Age. By repeating that humanist myth, he forfeits ground needlessly to the atheists. Before he writes about history he should remember that atheists have written history to suit their purposes. One should not accept anything they say. The Dark Ages is the Big Lie about Christianity. DeStefano does us no service by repeating it.

DeStefano also lumps Christians with believers in Islam, Deists and others. Yes, all of them believe in a God, but as a Christian, I don’t necessarily want to be lumped into one big group of ‘believers’.

My final quibble with the book is that there is a mismatch between the dire outcomes and the pitiful input. To speak of the ‘mind’ of Bill Maher is to pay him a giant compliment. I have never thought that Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher or Richard Dawkins had anything new or useful to say. DeStefano elevates these mediocrities to a higher plane than they deserve. Consider Bill Maher. He describes himself as a ‘leading atheist’, which should make everyone feel some pity for the trailing atheists. My suspicion is the Maher is a ‘leading’ atheist in precisely the same way that a figurehead ‘leads’ a ship. The atheist ship has plentiful amounts of fuel (i.e. money). The people supplying the money want something in return. I’d like to know what that is.

However, mostly DeStefano hits the target. The new atheists are bullies and cowards. They constantly pretend to be better than anyone else. DeStefano is right that the atheists want an ‘anything goes’ society in which they have the freedom to oppress others. They think they are above the law. In a godless society, there is, to use a phrase from Al Gore, ‘no controlling authority’. Powerful atheists chafe under the constraints of civil society; they want to break free from what binds them to the rest of humanity. The atheist does not care what unimaginable horrors await a lawless society, because he is rich enough to avoid the consequences. They’ve been around a long time. Hopefully DeStefano’s book will help them shuffle off the stage into the obscurity they deserve.

Because there are so many different stories that can be chosen to talk about the ancient world, and in particular the Greco-Roman civilization, it is important to choose a topic that typifies the entire civilization. An individual’s story can vary, depending on what the storyteller thinks is important. The first topic that I think should be kept in mind is female infanticide. Infants are the most vulnerable of humans. If couples decide that boys are more important than girls, that is an indicator of how women were treated as they went through life.

Female Infanticide in the Ancient World

Neither infanticide nor abortion were illegal in the Roman Empire. Their attitude was like that of the Greeks. Consider this letter from a husband to a wife:

Know the I am still in Alexandria. And do not worry if they all come back, and I remain in Alexandria. I ask and beg you to take good care of our baby son, and as soon as I receive payment I    will send it up to you. If you are delivered of a child, if it is a boy keep it, if a girl discard it. You have sent me word, “Don’t forget me.” How can I forget you? I beg you not to worry.[1]

This letter was written in 1 BC, which is around the time of Jesus’ birth. Note the tender concern of a husband for his wife and son, and the utter disregard for a daughter: If a girl, discard it. That about sums up the view of women in the ancient world. A study of 600 families, known from inscriptions at Delphi, showed that only 6 of them raised more than one daughter.

It might be argued that this did not reflect the status of women after they were born, but in fact it did. Studies done in the Roman Empire show that the sex ratio, which should be approximately 100:100 (men to women) was 131:100 in Rome and 140:100 in Italy and the colonies[2]. In the Roman Empire, men far outnumbered women. This is due not only to female infanticide but also the horrific mortality rate due to childbearing and abortion.

Sociologists who have studied sex ratios say that women have more freedom and respect in a society when the sex ratio is nearly equal. Where men outnumber women, women are ‘scarce goods’, and tight control is placed upon them. It is not clear which is the cause and which the effect. It could be said that men outnumber women because women are held in low esteem, or women are held in low esteem because men outnumber women.

There was no knowledge of sterilization in ancient Rome. Abortion was widely practiced. It often resulted in either death or loss of fertility. Women, at least at the top of society in Rome, enjoyed a wide range of action to party, drink and compete with men. They had abortions because a baby would interfere with their lifestyle and some poor women did so out of economic reasons. However. It was usually men who made the decision, and there was precedent both in Greek philosophy and in Roman law for this requirement. For example, in Plato’s Republic, abortion was mandatory for women over 40. Thus, even though it was dangerous for a woman, abortion was commonplace in the Roman Empire[3].

This lifestyle was open to the rich woman. For other women, life was difficult. Women slaves, of course, were sex slaves and slept with whomever they were told to sleep with. They were either concubines to a rich man or prostitutes. Business was closed to women; men made most of the money. Female occupations were generally restricted to ill-paid occupations such as hairdresser.

While a man might marry a woman, divorces were common. Rich Roman men typically had (in addition to a wife) a slave-wife, a concubine, with whom he enjoyed marital relations. These couples had something more closely approximating a family life. He could keep tight control over her, and if he wished to make his sons by her his heirs he could always adopt them. Some men, of course, resented even this level of commitment; they had multiple women or even harems[4]. Often, they preferred other men. It goes without saying that there was no stigma attached to adultery on the part of a man. They often frequented prostitutes, and VD was rampant. According to Roman law, he could beat his wife with impunity. While that provision weakened for rich wives, he could always beat a concubine.

The Christian Response

There was a high level of misogyny in Greco-Roman culture. In plays and poetry, women were portrayed in unflattering terms, as adulterers, poisoners, sluts, liars and whores. Juvenal’s 6th satire is on women; he advises men never to marry[5]. A wife was considered a curse by many ancient writers. Women might be ‘liberated’, in the sense that they could have the same loose morals as a man, but they were not held in high esteem. From the start, Christians opposed both abortion and infanticide. They were often ridiculed by pagans because of it. Typically, the child was exposed, i.e. left at a dump or along the side of the road. The mother could console herself that some kind stranger would take the baby girl home. Of course, it was much more likely that dogs would eat her.

Women flocked to the new religion[6]. Jesus was followed by women wherever He went. Pagan women were taught that the gods favored men; Jesus taught the God loved men and women equally. In Heaven, there was no difference between men and women[7]. Christian women did not have to kill their babies on orders from their husbands. Both men and women were taught to refrain from promiscuity, and the marriage bond was indissoluble. There was finally a religion open to women where women were treated with respect and dignity.

From the Bible, it is easy to understand that much of the early support for Christianity came from wealthy women who were disgusted with Greco-Roman society. Early Christianity made most of its converts in the Greek-speaking section of the Roman Empire, and here women’s freedom of action was even more restricted than in the Latin-speaking section. A substantial majority (around 60%) of the early congregations were women[8]. Christianity reversed the sex ratios; there were many more women than men in the early Church. Christians had a shortage of husbands, and pagans had a shortage of wives.

The Apostle Paul talks about marriages between a Christian and a pagan[9]. It is obvious that most such marriages were a Christian woman marrying a pagan man. Typically, the children of such a union were raised Christian, and often the man converted to Christianity. There was no infanticide and no abortion, so many more girls were raised in these households, and they were more valued. Christians tended to increase, since more women were born to them, they did not practice infanticide, and their practices reduced disease incidence. On the other hand, pagans tended to a natural decrease because of their unhealthy lifestyle and female infanticide. Pagans railed against Christianity because of its attractiveness to women. It was to no avail; eventually the pagans died out.

Female infanticide is, to my mind, the hallmark of toxic masculinity. To undervalue girls so much that they are killed before they have a chance at life is appalling discrimination. Christianity put a stop to this inhumane practice so that everyone could have a chance at life.

References
1) Stark, Rodney, The Rise of Christianity, 1996, Harper One, New York, NY, pp 97-98.
2) Ibid.
3) Ibid, pp 119-121.
4) Carcopino, Jerome, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, translated by I. O. Lorimer, 1940, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, pp 90-100
5) Highet, Gilbert, Juvenal the Satirist, 1954, Oxford University Press, London, UK, pp 91-103.
6) Stark, Rodney, The Rise of Christianity, 1996, Harper One, New York, NY, pp 97-98.
7) Matthew 22:23-30
8) Stark, Rodney, The Rise of Christianity, 1996, Harper One, New York, NY, pp 97-98.
9) 1 Corinthians 7:12-16.